


you can get what you want (or you can just get old)

by ammunitionist



Category: 1917 (Movie 2019)
Genre: (Fix-It if you pick the good ending lol), Angst, Bad Ending, Choose Your Own Ending, Fix-It, M/M, Night Terrors, Post-Canon, Slow Dancing, basically i wrote a post-canon angst fic and then got peer pressured into writing a good ending too, good ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-30
Updated: 2020-01-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:33:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22471120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ammunitionist/pseuds/ammunitionist
Summary: even back home, will still has nightmares.(title is from vienna by billy joel)
Relationships: Lance Corporal Schofield/ Lance Corporal Blake, William Schofield/ Thomas Blake
Comments: 7
Kudos: 112





	1. part one

**Author's Note:**

> hey! so basically, this is a choose your own ending fic- the 'good' ending is in chapter two, and the not-so-good ending is chapter 3! i've never written a fic like that so i hope it works out and makes sense haha

He wakes up like he's back in France.

Schofield expects to find himself bent the wrong way again, upside down on a staircase in Ecoust, thick and cooling blood congealing on the back of his skull. He thinks he'll sit up stiffly, awkwardly, and there will be a dead German sniper at his feet. He'll look out of the window and see a world on fire. He'll gather himself and sprint through the ruins of a town that likely won't ever recover.

Instead, it's the empty dark of his apartment.

Outside, lights shift from some railroad or another, maybe some nightlife, all incandescent and burnt amber against the thin, warped panes of his window. He didn't pick this place for the privacy, moreso the hefty veteran discount and middling quality of the quarter.

He's panting. The funny part is that he can't quite remember why. All Will can say for certain is that it was enough for his heart to be pounding, sending adrenaline flooding his body. When he was still fighting, still a soldier, he treasured those adrenaline rushes- they were the only things that kept him alive, more than once. They had pulled him back together when every part of being a murderer had been pushing him apart.

Will hunches forward and coughs dryly, the back of his throat sticky and painful. He must've been breathing hard for a while, then, if the pain had descended into his esophagus; at least an hour before. He wipes a tired, lanky, clean (thank God) hand across his face, contacting dampness on his forehead and upper lip.  
"Shit," he mumbles absently, just as the lump on the bed next to him begins to stir.

"Mmh, Will?"

A sleepy voice emanates from the spot next to him and Schofield jumps, just a little. He hadn't remembered a person sleeping with him; probably an effect of the panic.

"Yeah," he says back, more of a default answer than a real acknowledgement.

Tom sits up next to him, disoriented. The sheets fall into a puddle in his lap, bare shoulders stained orange ochre by the light outside.

"You okay? What's going on?" A warm hand slips under the back of Will's shirt, rubbing easy circles into his lower back. The touch spreads a peculiar warm feeling through to his belly, and Schofield exhales with a shaky sigh.

"I'm- yeah. Yeah, I'm alright. Just- you know."

Tom reaches up and cups the side of Will's head, muting his right ear to the world. Warmth envelops his face as Tom brings it to rest in the crook of his own shoulder, his guiding hand slipping down to cup the nape of Will's neck.

Schofield's body sends shivers up to meet it.

"I know. It's okay now. We're safe, it's okay." Tom says, practiced, like he's done this before and he knows exactly what Schofield needs to hear. Not that it's devoid of emotion, not even close, but Will somehow feels like this is right. Something about this just fits.

They're motionless for a few minutes.

The seething mess of red-yellow-orange-white light streaming in from outside trails patterns across Tom's bare skin, shifting, ever-changing. Will, head resting against his lover's, starts tracing them absently, noticing (and feeling like he's noticed before) that Tom is no longer surprised by his touch in the slightest. He follows a swath of red, a sliver of yellow, a streak of white, all across Tom's back, fingertips light and unobtrusive.

Will doesn't move until Tom does.

The shorter slides onto his feet, over Schofield's lap and down from their shared bed. The floorboards don't creak under his soft step, and Will remembers testing the floorboards with his whole weight, before even considering the apartment.

The noise sounded too much like rats for him to bear.

"What are you doing?" Will asks tiredly, watching how the muscle in Tom's shoulders shifts as he stretches, yawning. He's lost a little weight since they'd first met, but not in a thinner kind of way.

More of the roundness to his cheeks, softness of his hands, thickness of his calves. Baby fat, Will supposes it was, all melting off of his soldier. He looks like a man, now. Not the poor approximation he was at the start of the war.

"Get up. On your feet, Lance Corporal." Blake commands, but his voice is soft. Amused, like their titles are a product of some child's overactive imagination.

"Don't call me that," Will says, but he's smiling. He slips bare legs over the edge of the mattress, coming to his feet and giving a lazy, half-assed, limp salute. It's funny alone, but funnier because they are- were- the same rank. Equals.

"Now what?"

Blake responds with movement.

Tom picks up Will's right hand, hanging limp by his side, and sets it squarely on his shoulder. It fits there perfectly, like Will's palm was made to slot against his collarbone. Tom steps closer, their torsos pressing together gently, and takes Will's hip with his right hand. It's all so tender, incredibly gentle, so different from the circumstances of their meeting.

Confused, Will raises an eyebrow.

"Tom, you're making a fool of me," he says gently, tone bordering on chiding. It wouldn't be out of their tradition for the younger man to be doing so.

"I would never," Tom smiles broadly, a glint of adoration making his eyes soft. "Now c'mon. It'll help." Doubtful but willing (for Blake, always for Blake) Schofield follows his movement, which amounts entirely to a meditative swaying.

"Should we get the radio or something?" Will asks tentatively, the lack of music to derive rhythm from making him feel slightly awkward.

"No. If you really want music, I'll hum something." Tom's chin barely rests on Will's shoulder, but it's there anyway. Stubborn to the last.

Schofield doesn't even have to think about the answer to that one.

"Please."

Lips closed, Tom starts to hum out a simple tune, something in a major key. It sounds familiar enough to Will that he'd assume it's a bandstand favorite, though he didn't often frequent such places. They are more Blake's scene.

Outside, the sky melts in on itself, consuming every last particle of life into an incandescent haze.

Inside, William is at peace. Forgotten are his nightmares. This spot, with this man, in this moment, is exactly where he is destined to be. It feels good, it feels right, it feels like Tom is leaching all of the pain and tension and residual guilt from his body and disintegrating it like million-year-old-thread. It's so easy to just be; here, so easy to just let his body relax and free every shattered skeleton from his innumerous closets.

"Will, you need to listen to me carefully."

"Mm?" Schofield mumbles, having let his consciousness diffuse into the area between sleep and lucidity. Everything has taken on warmth, the edges of his vision fuzzy and blurring together.

"I love you. I've loved you. There aren't enough atoms in the universe to keep me from loving you."

Will mumbles a similar sentiment into Tom's shoulder.


	2. the good ending

"I told you we'd make it." Blake says, teasing. It's a cruelly soft play on what he'd said to Schofield on the day they undertook their voyage to the 2nd Devons, to Blake's brother.

Will still remembers the look of joy on Tom's face when he saw his brother again, albeit with a stab wound in the arm and he himself being considerably worse for wear.

It was very little short of miracle that they both survived.

"Yes," Will answers fondly, taking his lover's hand and turning them around so Blake's back is to the bed. He pushes gently against Tom's chest, watching him fall back against the bed, all playful limbs and curly hair. The locks aren't long, not even close, but they aren't cropped as short as when they'd been in service together. It's just the right length for Will to run his fingers through.

"So you did."


	3. the bad ending (i like this one better)

"I'll wait for you. Don't run to me, alright? Take your time."

"What?"

"I told you we'd make it."

And then Schofield is alone.

The loved, warm haze in his vision is gone. The lights from outside are dim, much dimmer, to the point where Schofield wonders if they were ever that bright to begin with. He's standing in the middle of his bedroom, alone, looking around the apartment in mildly panicked confusion. What just happened?

Where did Blake go?

And then he remembers.

Farmhouse. Cherries. Ragged doll. Broken glass. Milk. Dogfight. Water. Blood.

_"Am I dying?"_

_"Yes, I think you are."_

Will has to sit down, hard. The revelation hits him like a piece of shrapnel to the chest.

Somewhere in northern France, the body of Thomas Blake is rotting. He never came back with Will. He never saw his brother. He died of a fucking bleeding heart, somehow charitable in the middle of a god damned war.

A war that's over. A war that won and lost almost no ground. A war that, to the common man, was worth fucking nothing.

The colors in his room are no longer warm. Nothing is warm, and Will shivers as the shadows in the sequestered corners of his space begin to creep in. He slips back into bed, hands shaking, quickly rolling onto his back to face the ceiling. Blake is dead and you didn't save him. Blake is dead and you're bastardizing his memory. Blake is dead and you don't even deserve to grieve.

_Told you we'd make it._

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading!! i'm always so impressed with how kind and enthusiastic this fanbase is. love yall, wom cult forever.
> 
> comments, ad finitum, are appreciated and make my day every time i read one :}


End file.
